Basilius Besler

Trefoil (Clover) Trifolium Bituminosum odoratum. From the Hortus Eystenttensis.

The
Seventeenth century is commonly regarded as the golden age of botanical
illustration. Among the many florilegia produced, the most impressive was Basil
Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis. Besler,
an apothecary of Nuremberg, was entrusted with the care of the gardens of the
Prince Bishop of Eichstätt, Joseph Conrad von Gemmingham, around the end of the
sixteenth century. The gardens surrounded the Bishop's residence on the
Wilibaldsburg of Eichstätt and Besler was presented with 3000 florins to cover
the cost of producing a book to illustrate all the plants growing there.

Besler's project stretched over sixteen years, the major part being completed between
1610-12. Six engravers worked on the 374
plates which illustrated 1000 plants, over 600 different species. During the
years before publication many individual sheets were given away by the Prince
Bishop as gifts to his friends and fellow botanical enthusiasts. The two volume Hortus Eystettensis was finally published in 1613, one year after the
death of the Prince Bishop.

The book is arranged by season, each plant being
shown life size, several to each plate.
Weeds, wildflowers and garden plants are often combined in such a way as
to use up all the available space with engraved titles adding to the decorative element. New and
exotic plants were also illustrated -tobacco, sorghum and potatoes- alongside more ordinary vegetables including aubergines, tomato and red and green peppers. Bulbous
plants were particularly well represented, the eleven tulip plates catering for
the phenomenal amount of interest in this plant. No botanical details are shown
on the plates and this work should be seen as more of a decorative Florilegium
than a scientific endeavour.

Whereas
sixteenth century herbals were primarily concerned with herbs for their
usefulness, the florilegia of the seventeenth century focused on the decorative
qualities of the flowers they depicted. This crucial difference in
representation had it’s origin in a new attitude towards gardening whereby the
cultivation of ornamental plants began to take precedence over that of
vegetables and medicinal plants. In the fashionable gardens of Europe, newly
discovered flowers from America and tropics were planted alongside species from
the Ottoman Empire, providing spectacular displays of a vast range of exotic
specimens hitherto unknown in Europe.

None of the original
plates or drawings remain and it is difficult therefore to judge the plates as
examples of Besler's skill as a draughtsman. These plates are amongst the
earliest botanical engravings on copper and their style owes much to the rather
formal woodcuts of previous years. Each plate was accompanied by a brief
description and list of references to other authors. The gardens at Eichstatt did
not long survive the publication of the Hortus Eyestettensis. Von
Gemmingham's successor was no great plant lover and the gardens quickly
deteriorated; at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War they were unrecognisable
and by 1633 a vegetable plot.